sappeared until it was
entirely gone.

By eleven o'clock the place was usually thronged by people who seemed to
know each other in a furtive sort of way, and who sometimes would call
others by name across the room.

At one o'clock the front doors were closed and locked; the curtains were
tightly drawn so that not a ray of light was permitted to escape into
the street, blinds were pulled up to make this fact doubly secure, and
this was when the place really began to live and thrive in its true
character. Then also was when Mike Grinnel himself came out of his
shell, and assumed personal charge of the affairs of the place; for Mike
Grinnel had a reputation among the crooks and thieves who were his
customers, and if an incipient row started at any time among his guests
he had only to look with his frowning brow in their direction to quell
it.

The way into this dive of Grinnel's after the legal hours, and when it
was supposed to be closed, was, strangely enough, through a house from
the other side, and of course it followed that only the initiated--those
who were known to the man at the door--could pass.

When Nick Carter and his first assistant left the house that particular
Sunday night to go to Mike Grinnel's, the principal question was how
they were to get inside the place at all.

Nick had no doubt in his mind whatever that if Black Madge were in town
that she would be one who would most certainly visit Mike Grinnel's dive
Sunday night, for that was the red-letter night of the week at that
place among the inhabitants of the underworld.

He knew that she would feel perfectly secure against intervention there.
He knew that she would have perfect confidence in the espionage which
Mike Grinnel exercised in his place for the safety of his customers,
for it was his boast that no thief or criminal of any sort had ever been
arrested in his place and taken from it by the officers.

And, therefore, Nick felt sure that if he could but gain admission and
Black Madge were in the city, which he did not doubt, he would find her
there.

To enter a place of this kind one must be actually introduced; that is,
vouched for by some frequenter of it. It will not suffice for one to
apply at such a place, and state merely that he knows so-and-so and is
all right; he will be turned down hard. But Nick Carter was never
without resource in a matter of this kind, and, therefore, when he left
the house with Chick, instead of going direc